Where the knots in tales become untangled…
My brain is in a weird place right now. I’m currently reading The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry) by Siva Vaidhyanathan and just finished listening to the audiobook version of M Is for Magic, a collection of short stories by Neil Gaiman, and I’ve been on a real Star Wars kick after rewatching the VHS tapes of the original trilogy.
It’s very odd to have the realms of reality, dreams, and speculation all intersecting and intermingling in your head at the same time.
No one likes criticism. No one wants to hear that the paper or story or script that they spent days, weeks, months, even years slaving over is no good. Or even that only parts of it are not good. “Sorry, you missed the mark, try again.”
Rejection hurts. Criticism hurts. It’s like watching someone sucker-punch your infant child while having your fingers amputated because you aren’t worthy to be a writer and then having salt and alcohol slathered over those gaping, bleeding wounds.
Okay, I don’t think I’ve felt quite that extreme a reaction to criticism, but it is a lot like amputation and birth contractions, coming in waves with occasional sharp pangs that make you want to crawl into a hole and hide your face from the world forever.
But like the pain of a birth or an amputation, criticism is necessary in order for us to grow.
Fan fiction has a bad reputation on the Internet. It’s usually looked down upon as a pass-time of rabid fangirls living out their fantasies with or between their favorite characters. Poor spelling, poorer grammar, Mary Sues, and slash abound.
I’m not saying that fan fiction doesn’t have these elements because I’ve seen enough to know it exists. What I am saying is there is a lot more to fan fiction than just that.
I used to think that fan fiction was the last resort for people who couldn’t write. A cop-out for people who weren’t original enough, creative enough, or talented enough to be “real writers.” Ironically, no one had defined fan fiction or even explained it to me at that point, so I had only the vague image of teenagers with no lives mangling someone’s characters because they couldn’t make their own. What I didn’t realize was that I had been creating fan fiction ever since I could read. I just didn’t know that’s what I’d been doing.
The Cat's Cradle : On Hiatus! 